


Color in Your Cheeks

by LostAmongTheUndergrowth



Series: Wriggle up on dry land [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anorexia, Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Depression, Eating Disorders, F/M, Family, Food Issues, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Remus Lupin Lives, Remus Lupin has anorexia, Sad Remus Lupin, Set one year before the epilogue, Single Parents, Weight Issues, not that it really matters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 11:02:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17848247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostAmongTheUndergrowth/pseuds/LostAmongTheUndergrowth
Summary: Ginny had always known Remus had a problem with food. She just didn't know what they were supposed to do about it.





	Color in Your Cheeks

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prologue, from Ginny's point of view, to my in-progress multi-chapter fic "Woke Up New," which is about Remus Lupin's diagnosis of and treatment for anorexia, 50 years after he first developed the illness. It reveals what led up to Ginny's arrival at Remus' house with a dish of food in Chapter 1 of that fic. 
> 
> This stand-alone fic will probably only make sense if you've read "Woke Up New," and I'm planning a few different POV additions to the series as it goes on, particularly once Severus Snape comes into the main story. 
> 
> A warning that while fic does not specify weights, it does describe disordered eating, and family members' difficulty in understanding eating disorders. Please take care of yourself and look out for your own recovery.

 

_But five minutes looking in his eyes_

_And we all knew he was broken pretty bad_

_So we gave him what we had_

_\-- The Mountain Goats (Color in Your Cheeks)_

 

* * *

 

Ginny will never understand why it was food for Remus, but she has always secretly understood - has understood since she was 11 years old - why it was that he needed _something_. She remembers being 11 and writing in Tom Riddle’s diary and the diary writing back; doing these terrible things and realising she had done them. She recalls, most of all, the sick, roiling thought that you would do anything, absolutely anything, to make those feelings stop. Ginny has wondered, often, in the years since, why that feeling had never escalated further than a vague sense of self-loathing; she had never even imagined a situation where she would put an end to her suffering, her wrongdoing, by her own hand. It is a relief, now, that she had never considered suicide; she had been such a cosseted, sheltered little girl that she hadn’t even known what it was.

 

And while she doesn’t know exactly everything that has happened to Remus, she can imagine him in that desperate, hopeless place: his parents are long gone, as are all of his friends from school, both of his lovers, many members of the Order. He has Teddy, certainly, and a more devoted - and, honestly, overprotective - father you could never find, and he has Andromeda Tonks, although she hasn’t been the same since she lost Dora and Ted. But Remus is also a werewolf, and it colours his every interaction with the world. It is a crushing, catastrophic collection of circumstances and Ginny can completely understand better than most why something had to give. She will never, ever understand why it was food.

 

Looking back, it seemed that all of them had always known about Remus’ problem with eating, but none of them had really, truly comprehended it, like one of those pictures where you cross your eyes and see a vase, but completely miss that it also depicts an old woman’s face. Remus had been a busy, full-time dad, and everyone had looked terrible after the war, so the stressed creases around his eyes and perpetually loose, patched clothing had been par for the course. He had almost completely stopped using magic at home, like many of his generation had following the Battle of Hogwarts, as though hoping that ceasing to utilise their power would mean it was never needed again. Mum kept her house running on spell-power but many didn’t; Remus owned a washing machine and he cleaned and vacuumed his own home, a  weird kind of penance.

 

They had often eaten at big, family-style dinners together at Mum’s dining table - Arthur, Hermione and Ron, Harry and Ginny, Andromeda, Neville sometimes, and Luna and Xenophilius, Kingsley as well, and of course Fleur and all the remaining Weasley brothers, one or the other of whom seemed to be constantly apparating at Molly’s elbow, just to reassure her that they were all present and accounted for. The dinners were raucous, messy affairs, and conversation flowed freely, but no one took much notice of what anyone else was eating. Remus always seemed to be tending to Teddy, anyway; cutting up his food or wiping his mouth, or stopping him from pulling a pitcher or a dish onto the floor.

 

Harry had said something guiltily to her, once or twice, about an explosion of anger he’d had toward Remus in the heat of the moment, during the war: he had accused Remus of abandoning his family. Now Harry could see Remus frantic in his efforts to be the perfect parent, to be there for Teddy, every moment of every day, and he was worried it was because of something he, Harry, had said. Ginny didn’t think so; Remus had just lost so much already, she had told Harry, that it seemed natural that he would be clinging on to Teddy for dear life. Unless the boy was at Harry and Ginny’s or at Andromeda’s, Remus didn’t like to let his son out of his sight for long, and he was always early to pick up Ted at the end of a night away. They had all offered to babysit, of course, so that Remus could have nights off, but he did not take nights off - never went on dates or out to the movies, or took a child-free holiday. But once a month, around the time of the full moon, it couldn’t be helped, and Remus would anxiously leave his son - an amiable, friendly boy who happily embraced adventure and the unknown - at one of their houses, with a list of instructions and failsafes.

 

It wasn’t until after Teddy grew old enough to eat his own dinner without Remus’ help that Ginny started to notice that the older man did not eat very much at meals. He usually filled a plate and, at least in the early years, gave mum the kind of sincere, extravagant compliments on her cooking that made her blush and wave her hands in embarrassment, but there was never a lot of food gone from the dish by the time Remus got up to leave the table. Mum noticed, of course; the woman would catastrophize about Harry’s health if he didn’t finish a second plate of food, for Merlin’s sake, and Harry was watching his cholesterol these days!

 

“Are you not hungry, Remus?” she’d ask, as she skipped her wand over his plate when she started magicking everyone else’s into a pile. “How about I leave yours a little longer, there’s a dear; I don’t want to rush you.”

 

“I haven’t poisoned it, you know,” she’d wink at him on the way past to the kitchen, and Remus would laugh, weakly.

 

Later, she became more forceful. “You’re looking much too thin, Remus my love,” she’d say. “How on earth will we ever get any meat on your bones if you insist on eating like a bird? I don’t want you wasting away to nothing on my watch.”

 

And Remus would protest and smile and say he’d eaten plenty, and Harry would throw him a sympathetic look and Ron would call out, “What is she _like!_ Come on mum, leave the poor man alone, not everyone is blessed with my impressive appetite, you know.”

 

And then Hermione would mutter something under her breath and Arthur would mutter something under his and mum would threaten clips round the head and George would yell over top of them all and everyone would forget what they’d been talking about, and Remus would look relieved. Ginny always remembered to look at him, and he always looked relieved.

 

Over the years, Remus had become less vocal about mum’s cooking, as though he had given up on some kind of pretense, but Ginny had kept watching. Had watched him get more clever about rearranging food to look like he had eaten, always holding a bite on a fork that never quite made it to his mouth. She had been fairly sure, one Christmas, that he must have been using his wand under the table to vanish his food in small, barely noticeable amounts - that or transport it elsewhere - because she had watched for him to take a bite and he hadn’t, but the pile on his plate kept diminishing in size.

 

That night, as she was brushing her hair, Harry warm and solid in bed behind her, she voiced it aloud for the first time, feeling rather embarrassed.

 

“Do you ever worry about Remus?” she asked.

 

“Oh, Merlin, yes,” Harry had said. “He is the most enormous, catastrophic worry that man. I love him, but you can’t think too much about his problems, Ginny. He’ll never talk about any of it, I’ve tried, and it’s overwhelming to even contemplate half the shit he’s been through. You know what I mean? You’ve just got to leave him be.”

“I was more thinking about his eating,” said Ginny, “Or lack thereof. Have you ever noticed that he just doesn’t really eat very much?”

 

“I mean, I suppose,” Harry said, “But he’s never been a robust sort of guy. And then there’s the whole…” He mimed howling at the moon, and she gave him an affectionate shove.

 

“I guess,” she said, unconvinced. “But wouldn’t turning into an animal burn more energy, not less? I’ve just noticed… He barely eats enough to keep a kid Teddy’s age alive, and it’s not like he’s got any spare flesh on him. It just bothers me is all.”

 

“Don’t hurt me,” said Harry, “But you do sound like Molly a bit.”

 

Ginny had beaten him with a pillow until he had yelled in defeat.

 

It hadn’t stopped her worrying. Feeling treacherous and guilty, she had even taken furtive looks inside the pantry and fridge when she’d been round at Remus’, but for as long as Teddy was at home, the shelves had been well-stocked, even though they never looked like mum’s. Where Molly’s pantry was full of mysterious jars of dry ingredients and tubs of baking, half-eaten blocks of chocolate wrapped in foil, food piled everywhere, Remus’ was neat and orderly, food kept in small quantities, all of it healthy. But he was only cooking for two, Ginny reasoned, and as a single dad, of course things from packets with vegetables added were much simpler, even if he used basic spells.

 

There was never a treat in sight, but Remus wasn’t strict on Teddy, at any rate, bought him ice creams at the beach and slices of cake when they visited tea rooms, a little paper bag of sweeties with a twisted top on trips to the park. Ginny saw Teddy enough to know he had a completely healthy approach to food - a little of everything, and treats when offered. When Harry and Ginny started their brood, Remus regularly showed up to their house with pockets full of chocolate, which the children delighted in wheedling out of him while they used him as a jungle gym, but he always left anything uneaten in Ginny’s cupboard when he departed. There was nothing she could put her finger on, but Remus - Remus simply did not look well. She daren’t ask her mother and hadn’t known who else to ask so, frustrated, she had let the matter drop.

 

Things changed when Teddy had left for Hogwarts. They had still seen Remus, of course, but without the excuse of gathering the kids together, it was less frequent and often involved a drink or a Quidditch match rather than a meal. Remus began to excuse himself from mum’s dinners, or he’d say he was busy early in the evening and would join them after they’d eaten, for big mugs of tea in the Burrow’s cosy living room.  

 

Remus had always dressed shabbily, in layers, and his clothing choices had grown more comfortable since he was no longer out and about with Teddy; Ginny thoroughly supported the notion of being comfortable, but it was difficult to make out Remus’ figure through it all. She was sure it wasn’t her imagination that his cheekbones were becoming even more pronounced, jawline more defined, the veins in his thin neck and bony hands increasingly obvious. Remus had always been an nervous, careless sort of thin, but now he looked ill.

 

Others had noticed; mum, who had always called her directives to eat across the table, caught Remus by the elbow one night as they went through for tea and asked him, almost under her breath, whether he was all right.

 

“Are you sure you’re quite well, mate?” Ron had said, offhand, at a Chudley Cannons game, Hermione’s anxious face hovering over his shoulder the indicator that this had been an earlier subject of discussion. Remus always seemed embarrassed to be asked, and, smiling, would deflect the question with a joke or a flippant remark before turning the conversation to something else.

 

There was little reason to visit Remus at home anymore, with Teddy at school, so Ginny had not had the chance to peek inside his kitchen cupboards. She wondered what she’d find if she did. It still baffled her: why not eat? As a former professional Quidditch player she had seen her fair share of diets, and had been lucky never to be asked to drop weight herself, although she had kept her meals strict during the playing seasons. But she had seen the consequences of diets gone too far, of health and careers ruined when players were convinced that lightness on their broomsticks, or amount of muscle gained, were the only ways to assess their performance. It was mistaken, and it was a sickness, but Ginny understood how it happened. You were told over and over and over again what your body must look like in order to preserve your livelihood, and of course some people took it too far, couldn’t help themselves.

 

But surely no one had told Remus he needed to lose weight? What could he possibly need to eat so sparingly for?

 

A conversation with Teddy at her and Harry’s home last summer had been what had finally spurred her into action. She had not seen much of Teddy that summer, but she had thought it was because he was almost grown now; he was heading into his final year at Hogwarts and probably didn’t want little kids underfoot all the time. She and Harry had seen him once a week or so, but he had not stayed over for days at a time - acting the clown for her children the way his father once had - as he had done over previous summers.

 

When Teddy showed up around dinner time, a couple of nights before he was due to return to Hogwarts, Ginny could tell he was upset.

 

He had always been an expressive, chatty child - she had imagined him filling up the silences in the townhouse in Wales, and Remus happily letting him - but on this night, he had looked grim and tired, mouth turned down, and hadn’t said much when she welcomed him in.

 

“We’re about to have dinner,” she said, as Harry yelled “Hi, mate!” over his shoulder, his head buried in the couch cushions, looking for a missing toy.

 

“I can go,” Teddy had said. “I... I don’t want to impose, I just couldn’t take another night watching - I mean - I just needed to get out of the house.”

 

“Don’t be silly,” Ginny had said. “This is your house too. Come in and eat with us.”

 

For once, Teddy had displayed little appetite, moving vegetables around his place with a fork. He looked pale and tired, and Ginny - reminding herself of Molly, with mild horror - wondered first whether he was coming down with something or had had a fight with Remus, before escalating, by the end of dinner, to a serious illness, drug addiction, or urge to come out of the closet.

 

She looked meaningfully at Harry at the end of the meal, and he swept the plates up, grabbing the children in friendly headlocks and wrestling them towards baths and books. She knew he would entertain them upstairs until she came up to tell him the coast was clear, even though he was doubtless worried about Teddy too. Ginny loved Harry; he made everything so simple, even when it wasn’t.

 

“All right,” she had said, firmly, to Teddy, once they were ensconced in the living room, mugs of tea and biscuits in hand. “Something is up, and I think you’d like to talk to me about it. Is everything all right?”

 

And out it had come: Teddy’s dread about seeing his father each holidays because he could see Remus looking more and more ill but did not know what to say or do about it; the guilt he felt about not wanting to see the man he adored more than anyone on the planet and chronically missed during term time. Remus’ clear anxiety about having to fit eating with Teddy into a daily routine that had solidified, obviously without food as a priority, while his son was at school. His relief when Teddy was out at the Potters' or Molly’s or Andromeda’s or a school friend’s for dinner, which over previous summers, Teddy had ensured would happen as often as possible, just to give his father the space he needed. Teddy was a kid, Ginny reminded himself, and he simply hadn’t known what to do.

 

This summer, Teddy had seen Remus on the train platform and felt scared. His father looked more frail than Teddy could ever remember him, and Teddy had been afraid to let Remus out of his sight, no matter how painful dinner times were. Suspecting his previous absence from the evening meals over summer had allowed his father to simply skip them altogether, Teddy had been staying home as much as possible, in order to force Remus - if only in order to keep up appearances - to sit down at the table with him every evening, plate of food in front of him, and at least pretend to eat.

 

“But it’s not helping,” said Teddy, quiet and resigned. He had been angry once, he said, years ago. He had felt angry at his father for doing this hurtful thing to Teddy, to himself. But he realised, now, that it was not Remus’ fault, whatever this was.

 

“I don’t want to go back to school,” he added. “I floo him every night, but that doesn’t feel enough any more. I’m scared he’s going to… I mean, I think he’s already… Fuck, Aunt Gin, I can’t…”

 

Ginny put both arms around him and pulled him close to her, the way she had when he was a little boy and confessed that he missed his mother but didn’t know what sort of person he ought to miss.

 

“Have you tried telling him all of this?” she asked, feeling cowardly at the same time for putting something on a teenager, a kid, that she hadn’t been able to raise with Remus herself.

 

Teddy sighed. “I s’pose I never knew what to say,” he said, unhappily. “What on earth am I accusing him of? He’s the best dad, he’s done everything for me, and I know his life hasn’t been easy, and I don’t even know what’s wrong with him! I mean,” he added, uncertainly, “He’s never eaten very much, and I just thought he wasn’t very hungry! I’ve been such a fucking idiot, and he’s going to…”

 

Ginny grasped for him, tighter this time, and rocked him like she did Albie.

 

“None of us knew what to say,” she admitted, and his tear-streaked face shot up in surprise. “I’m so sorry, Teddy, because we’re the adults here and you’re not, but I think all of us knew Remus was sick and we didn’t know what to say, even to each other.

 

“I watched you so carefully when you were a little boy,” she said, feeling desperate that he know how much she had cared. She was crying now too.  

 

“I watched you so hard, and I always thought - if there was the slightest sign that you were unhappy, or going hungry, or if your dad ever seemed like he wasn’t looking after you, I would… I don’t know, I would bring you back here, or get your Gran to step in, or I’d put Molly in charge, or something. But you always looked… I’m sorry, Teddy. I feel like I’ve let you down.”

 

“Nah,” said Teddy, “You’ve been a great auntie, the best. And dad’s been the best dad. I think I understand how you felt, it was the same as me. I could never work out how to say anything to him because there was nothing to say - why should I have a problem with my dad being skinny and not eating very much? I couldn’t. I mean, I did pour a bucket of water on his scales once, when I was angry about him not eating…”

 

“You what?” Ginny couldn’t help smiling.

 

Teddy laughed. “Yeah, it was pretty stupid. I think he liked to pretend we just happened to have scales sitting in our bathroom for no reason at all, and I didn’t even know what they were for years. I climbed on once and saw the number, but I didn’t know what it meant. But I asked Fleur what hers were for once, when I saw them in her bathroom, and I guess - I was 12, I was just starting to figure out that dad didn’t eat, and I put two and two together and figured out what he was doing.

 

“And that summer, I would stand outside the bathroom door when he got up in the mornings and I could hear him getting on the scales. It made me so cross, you know? I just thought - I didn’t know why he cared what he weighed, and I thought that if the scales didn’t work he wouldn’t know the number, so he’d start eating and everything would be fine.”

 

He shook his head, ruefully. “I mean, I got in a bit of trouble for flooding the bathroom, which is what I told him I’d done, and then I just found a way of suggesting that we didn’t need any scales, really, and I guess I went back to school thinking I’d solved the problem. But then I came home for Christmas, and… well, you know.”

 

Ginny did. And the story about the scales was new to her; it meant Remus had, at some point, cared about his weight, which suggested a deliberate and clinical interest in what the number was. Perhaps this was more like the Quidditch players’ affliction than she had thought. He might have been trying to gain weight, rather than lose it - but then, why wouldn’t he be concerned with eating more, if that had been the case? No, she decided, Remus not only didn’t eat well but had been deliberately trying to keep his weight down, or was worried that he weighed too much. Knowing these facts didn’t help; she just couldn’t compute them.

 

That night, she had asked Teddy whether he wanted her to say anything to Remus, but he had sworn her to secrecy. She wasn’t sure about that, especially now - knowing her suspicions had been confirmed, and that all the adults involved in Teddy’s life had made his pain worse by not intervening - but she had agreed for the time being. It hurt Ginny to see him off that night, looking much older and more tired than he should need to, and she thought - not for the first time - about the ways the war had been passed down to their children, kids who should have grown up utterly carefree. Her own brood knew to play quietly when daddy couldn't get out of bed, or was grim and drawn from lack of sleep. And now Teddy carried the weight too. 

 

She had promised Teddy that she would keep an eye on his dad when he went back to school, and she had: more invitations for meals, more social events centred around food. And she’d started to visit Remus, bringing meals with her when she did. Something nagged at her though, a sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t about food at all, that forcing Remus to be around the thing he seemed to fear most did not appear to be helping him to tackle it. But she was helpless to know what was best. She had told Harry, of course, and he had cried too.

 

But tears weren’t salvation, Ginny knew that. She had seen her mother cry and cry them for Fred, and Molly still took pills to get to sleep every night. And so Ginny baked Remus lasagnes and casseroles, stews and gratins, and he returned the dishes empty but his face was emptier and his clothes emptier still. And she sometimes thought to herself at night, _one day I will have the courage to say something,_ and she kept on not knowing what to say and she kept on not saying it.

 

 

* * *

 

_We cleared a space for him to sleep in_

_And we let the silence that's our trademark make its presence felt_

_Come on in, we haven't slept for weeks_

_Drink some of this, it'll put color in your cheeks_

_\-- The Mountain Goats (Color in Your Cheeks)_

 


End file.
